40 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



Rome, succeeding Greece in greatness, copying its customs, 

 and lighting her Roman candles from Greek fire, showed an 

 equal fondness for the Rose. Romans of wealth and Romans 

 of taste were as anxious as Horace, 



" Neu desint epulis ros£e ; " 



and when the Rose-trees of Passtum had finished their 

 autumnal bloom,* they were succeeded by flowers artifi- 

 cially produced by means of hot water. Cleopatra, accord- 

 ing to Athenasus, had the floor covered with them a foot 

 and a half in thickness ; and Nero is said to have expended 

 at one feast nearly ;^30,ooo in Roses — a nice little order for 

 his nurseryman. In their joys and in their sorrows the 

 Rose was their favourite flower, and the Corona convivialis, 

 the Corona nuptialis, and the Corona funebris, were wreathed 

 alike from the Rose. They miade wine from Roses, con- 

 serves from Roses, perfumes,*!* ^'^h a^d medicine from Roses. 

 The Rosa canina took its name, it is said, like the Kwo^cdoy 



* Doubts have arisen whether the Roses of Paestum bloomed twice in the 

 year, as Virgil and Ovid state. The second efflorescence may have taken place 

 in the glowing fancy of the poet, as now with so many of our Hybrid Per- 

 petuals in the imagination of our French friends. 



+ The historians of perfumery tell us that the Rose was the first flower from 

 which perfume was made, and that Avicenna, an illustrious Arabian doctor, 

 who discovered the art of extracting the perfume of flowers by distillation, 

 made his first experiment upon Rosa centifolia, and so invented Rose-water. 



